Rune King

He hadn't barely been able to move, and yet he'd killed two men. Two soldiers, battle-hard, one of them ready for him with a sword in hand. Gunnar had done it with a knife, and with his hands bound and lashed to a pole.

The fury in his eyes was hard to miss. It had been terrifying, and yet at the same time, the knowledge that it had been something he did for her, it was strangely… exhilarating.

The man's body moved completely with control. He knew what he wanted, and what he had to do to get it. He was in complete control, and moved with speed that belied his size. Yet she'd seen him hurt, saw him now, delirious and unconscious. A child could overpower him, the way he was now.

She looked down at him, sleeping. He was handsome, for a Northman. Very handsome, she added, then immediately tried to take it back. There were things that Deirdre would allow herself to think and to act on.

The looks of the Northerner were not one of them. Handsome or not, protective or not, he was responsible for her situation more than anyone else. Damn his apology, damn his sympathy, damn his promises of protection.

She took a healthy amount of the crushed herb mixture and pressed it into his wound, harder than she might have liked, and he gave a loud groan of discomfort before going silent and still once more.

The groan immediately triggered a bad feeling in her. She shouldn't have let her frustration take over what she was doing. She was supposed to heal people, supposed to help them.

She had done this to herself, as much as anyone else had done it to her. She knew better than to go into town. Knew better than to trust the people that she had followed there. But they had asked her to help them.

She couldn't refuse that.

And now, just because he had taken her away from her life, destroyed so much… did that give her the right to hurt a defenseless man? No, it didn't.

She looked at him for a long moment, pressing her hand down on the wound in his side.

In a few minutes she would have to pull some out—he would heal too quickly, and what sort of effect would it have if she just left all those herbs in as the wound closed up around them?

She started pulling them free a moment later, trying to ignore Gunnar's still-unconscious protests. It needed to be done. Yet…

To her very great surprise, he bled still. She pressed down hard on the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. Perhaps it had been her own doing. Perhaps if she hadn't do

ne any of this, then he would have been completely fine. But it was more than a little bit concerning.

He wasn't healing nearly as fast as she expected, after all.

The pain was beginning to become familiar, like a new friend. Gunnar's eyes flicked open, the sky still dark from the clouds, though from what he could see outside the rain had subsided.

Deirdre wasn't looking at him, but she noticed him stirring and leaned forward as much as the rope would let her, pressing in. Ready to mother him to her heart's content.

"How are you feeling?"

He grunted, then thought better of it. "Hurts. But I'll live."

She sat back and he watched her do it. The thoughts that entered his head, looking at the curves of her body shifting and moving as he watched, they were harder to push away. He had other things on his mind, but he couldn't do anything about them. Not without putting her at risk.

He couldn't afford that, not right now. In time, maybe something would change. He'd get his chance to take back the raid when he could, but until then, he had all the time in the world. The arousal he felt, it had been easy to ignore when he had important responsibilities, people to keep safe.

Now, he had nothing more than hours to fill and plans to make and a beautiful woman to lay near. He closed his eyes, hoping to drift back into sleep, to try to escape the pain. The ropes digging into his arms, though, reminded him of the screaming pain in his shoulders, and that in turn reminded him of the dull ache of the pernicious wound in his side and the pain from where he'd been stuck through.

He looked over at her, and watched her watching the road behind them. She looked tired, but something else was in her face, something he hadn't seen before. He couldn't begin to say for certain, but it almost looked as if she weren't so upset any more. What it is that she'd decided she wasn't mad about, he wasn't ready to say.

It was a welcome change from the attitude she'd had before, constantly putting him under scrutiny and criticizing his every move. Gunnar knew exactly why she was angry, understood it completely, but that didn't mean he wanted to hear it either.

It would hurt, he knew instinctively, even as he decided to sit up and get onto the bench seat beside him. There was no good reason to get up in it, nothing to be gained from it, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to do it anyway. Nothing to be gained from laying there on the wooden floor, either.

And besides, he wanted to be up. Wanted to be able to see what Deirdre was seeing, wanted to feel right again. Even if it hurt, it didn't matter. He turned over, then used his hands to push himself up to his knees. The pain was there, but since he expected it, the sting hurt a little less.

Looking out back he could almost imagine what she was seeing. A few hundred yards back, he could almost make out the bodies of two-score Englishmen who had stopped them when the hills pressed together. The hills were too steep, and fell off too much. Like small cliffs. There would've been no other way through the countryside.

It was as good an ambush location as he could have asked for, but someone must have realized what was happening because as far as he could see no other wounded had joined them in the cart, and they were moving again within the day.

Gunnar let his eyes wander again, to Deirdre's hair, to her face. To the smooth ivory skin visible above the neckline of her dress, and the valley in between her breasts. He forced himself to look up. She could have caught him looking at any time. But as he did, something caught his eye. A shock of red, brighter than her hair.